‘Dear Brother and Friend! You will see by the enclosed why you had not sooner an answer to your letter. Had I had anything to communicate at an earlier date, I should not have failed to send to you immediately, as I promised. Be assured that I wrote to the personage in question, and that there was no want of punctuality on my part. I think, however, that with what you have now, you will be as well content as if you had had it sooner. I send my own man express with this, having no other messenger at command. If I can be of use to you in anything else, I beg to assure you, you will always find me ready to serve you. Your good brother and friend, Jehan Frelon. ‘To my good brother and friend, master Michael Villanovanus, Doctor in medicine, Vienne.’ It is matter of deep regret that with the exception of the first communication of Calvin to Villeneuve, which is in the form of an essay rather than a familiar epistle, and was written some time before the stinging missive sent through Frelon, we have nothing from him that would have enabled us to judge of the general style and character of his letters, though of this we may form an estimate from his subsequent writings. Calvin was far too much engaged to make copies of his letters, and we may feel certain that Villeneuve, on the first intimation of danger threatening him from the authorities of Vienne, destroyed every scrap of writing he had ever had from the Reformer, calculated as it was to compromise him in the eyes of Roman Catholics. Forced, for the sake of his French correspondents, to resort to a pseudonym, Calvin had probably addressed Villeneuve in his proper name. The letter to Frelon and the one from Frelon to Villeneuve must have been overlooked, or thought to contain nothing that could be adversely interpreted, and so found their way to the Judicial Archives of Vienne, whence they were recovered and published by Mosheim.[56]